It's early (-ish) Monday morning, and I'm gently revving myself up for the beginning of a new week. In other words, I'm doing a lot of yawning (6:30 feels even earlier after a weekend of sleeping in!) and surfing on the internet. Ah well. Whatever works, eh?

I finished my newest short story, "It's All About the Shoes", yesterday--hurray! Best of all, I just read through it again, and I really like it. I'll give it a week or two for personal distance and the semblance of objectivity, then do some revisions and send it out. Happy me!

Which means, of course, that when Patrick and I sat down at 7 a.m. today to do our writing, I promptly uncapped my pen, held it poised above my notebook and....stared. Blankly. At it. For an hour. Occasionally, I drew colorful pink dots in interesting patterns on the edge of the paper. I took many thoughtful sips of my (homemade) latte. I wrote the first two lines of one possible story, then decided it wouldn't work. I doodled some stars and asterisks. I drew more dots. At the very, very end of the hour a first line popped insistently into my head, and I wrote it down. A second good line followed, and then one I wasn't as sure about. And then our hour was up, and I'd written all of five lines total. But I think that last opening actually is going to work, because I read it out loud to Patrick, and it made him laugh out loud, which is my constant writing goal. (Okay, not with the really dark stories, but otherwise...) So I have the beginning of a new story, now, and if I can only think of the rest of it sometime soon, I'll be rocking!

Meanwhile, my goals today are to go jogging and finish my Armida thesis chapter at long, long, painful last!

Wish me luck...